2018 - The Year of The Cyborg

Whilst most pundits are focusing on AI, VR, AR and Machine Learning, it is clear that the Digital Frontier has moved on to Human Integrated Computing (HIC). Though not everyone uses the same terminology, so you may see Human Computer Interface, Brain Computer Integration and a number of similar terms to describe basically the same thing.

So this year has seen the IEEE's 6th International Conference on Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) and the Hackaday Competition for the Greatest Human Computer Integration (with a prize of US$50,000). Clear themes from both events were the avoidance of direct implants and using any number of techniques to communicate between people and computer devices. 

A lot of these are based upon reading brain waves or nerve impulses and there is a strong theme of applications around things which help people recover from debilitating accidents or deal with disability.  However it is clear that recent advances in the ease of applying machine learning to solutions has been a clear game changer in interpreting brain waves and nerve impulse signals. The ability of machine learning to recognise how to filter out extraneous signals and focus on what matters to the application is key to this.

Additionally, in a wider social context there is a fringe trend towards people choosing to "self adapt" with home grown technology implants into their bodies. This trend, sometimes called Trans-humanism, involves implanting anything from magnets, through chips to specific devices into their bodies to provide a variety of single function applications. Although Lukas Zpira refers to it as "Body Hacktivism" and espouses a creed of "taking control of our destinies by continuously reinventing the self".

So what does this mean in terms of realisation in practical day-to-day life? Well there are a surprising number of products which are either ready for market or close to release, as well as any number of technical concept demonstrators. These include:

Prosthetic Limbs,

Exoskeleton Devices,

Turning Thought into Speech, see Nuros's Nuos software

Eyeball Tracking,

Remote Controlled Limbs, e.g. CTRL Labs Wrist Band,

Additional Limbs, e.g. a second pair of arms on a backpack - Keio University's Fusion 

Accessing Human Memory,

Improved Physiological Measurement of things such as Blood Pressure,

Detection of Emotions.

Though, to my mind one of the more interesting things is the research being conducted by 

researchers at Drexel and ISAE-SUPAERO into aircraft pilot'scognition during extreme incidents and how they deal with the sensory overload of multiple sound alarms, flashing indicators and situational awareness when an accident occurs during flight. Their research involves attempting to monitor how they deal with such incidents, using functional Near Infra Red Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to quantify brain activity response in the Anterior Prefrontal Cortex. So far they have demonstrated its feasibility and the fact that in real life, the overload is higher than in a simulator and pilots make more mistakes. In the future it should be possible to use this to assist in optimising instrumentation design, reduce cognitive overload and the likelihood of errors.

All this represents practicable and achievable goals in the evolution of the path towards the dreams of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg who are pursuing full embedding of computers into the brain with their Neuralink and Building 8 programmes. But as I mentioned in a previous posting there are immense issues around not just technical practicalities, but ethics, security, phsychology, dealing with potential information overload and long term upgrade capability to be addressed before these goals become safe, let alone desirable.

3G 4G 5G Anyone?

Earlier this month, during London Tech Week a large sector of the telecommunications industry was keen to promote what is happening with the emerging 5G standard and the various pilots and technology trials being conducted to demonstrate what you can do with faster, less latent mobile networks and increased capacity. Everyone was keen to show how it makes wide scale implementation of IoT with billions of devices possible.

Meanwhile in the real world, Virgin is busy implementing its own 4G network freeing itself from its historical dependence upon EE's infrastructure. This is obviously a huge investment and critical to its future operations. So it is a pity that the roll out to customers has been so poor. The standard letter provides simple instructions, which when followed leaves many Virgin customers without a working mobile 'phone. My wife's experience has been that it left her phone unable to receive phone calls or text messages, although she could send texts and make calls. This is not good if you rely on your mobile for business as she does. Anyway, on phoning Virgin, she was told that she had not registered the SIM card which Virgin had sent her. She was then told she would have to wait until Monday (from Friday lunch time) for the SIM registration to take effect. One has to ask, why Virgin did not pre-register the cards when they were sent out. BTW, I also received a card from Virgin because I am upgrading from 3G to the new 4G network and was told that my card was not registered either. Requiring every single customer to contact Virgin at more or less the same time to register a SIM must be a major implementation bottleneck and the result of a poorly thought out implementation plan. Let's hope that the coverage of the new network is good. As I live in a village where traditionally only EE's network worked well.

Moving on from the parochial to the transatlantic, I have to thank Adam Stead, from Nimbus Ninety, for pointing out the Elon Musk and the Farting Unicorn story from the Guardian, in his weekly news letter. This is a truly funny farce which could have been avoided. Hopefully he reaches an amicable and mutually satisfying arrangement with the other protagonist, who is complaining about alleged breaches of his artistic copyright.

In the meantime, I have put my money where my mouth is and bought a Dreem headset, to see if it really will deliver the promised enhancement to my sleep patterns. Once I have a few weeks, apparently 5 weeks is the period over which I should notice this, I shall report back in another blog.

Brave New Worlds of Emerging Technolgies

People focusing on Digital Businesses often forget about all the other advances being made around them. However, many Digital Businesses rely on a fusion with other types of established and emerging technologies themselves. At this time of year, it is traditional to let optimism rush to one's head and indulge in a drop of futurism and see what might be coming around the corner. So whilst everyone else is getting excited by AI and cryptocurrencies, I thought that I might look at what else will change our lives, industry and society in general. 

ENERGY

Almost everything we do and all future innovation relies on a plentiful supply of affordable energy. In the big science corner, the champion for future generation is Nuclear Fusion. Although the last 50 years or so have shown that this is more difficult to deliver than originally thought in the 1970s, when governments started to put interesting amounts of money forward for research establishments and pilots. Recently, scientists have started to get more upbeat about it and make more promising noises.  Given the huge capital cost of building working fusion reactors, I think we are 20 years off a robust and operable design being commissioned as a working facility. The issue will be whether this is economic and makes sense by the time we get there. With current day technology, this makes sense as a reliable form of base power generation is needed to supplement renewables, which tend to fluctuate with tides, winds and daylight.

Renewables, however, are making rapid progress. The costs of producing PV cells for solar power have fallen dramatically in the last 20 years, whilst the means of encapsulating them in things like roof tiles and road foundations have advanced impressively. Hand-in-hand, research into battery technology is advancing well to improve energy density (energy per kilo of battery) and battery compactness and since Elon Musk launched Tesla, battery management system technology has advanced significantly to assure the likelihood that the internal combustion engine in its fossil fuel forms at least is likely to disappear in almost all new vehicles within the next 10 years. Although, in the case of China, if its vision for roads which also act as solar farms is fully implemented, vehicles will be able to recharge via microwaves or induction, whilst they drive over the road surfaces, reducing the emphasis on large battery storage.

The other outliers for adoption are hydrogen and geothermal. Hydrogen's issue is not really the amount of power needed to split water and produce a plentiful supply, it is a matter of energy density. Vehicles need to be roughly half the weight that they are now to make hydrogen propelled vehicles a practicable proposition. This is probably doable, but needs a revolution in the construction and manufacturing methods used to build them. Geothermal, is again interesting and promises much. However, geology and costs of drilling and extracting thermal energy in a usable form present difficulties for mass adoption. Although there does seem to be a good case for certain types of building in the right locality.

HUMAN CENTRED DEVELOPMENTS

It seems that we are now on the cusp of delivering a whole raft of medicines, treatments and devices which will address issues of ageing and disability. Medical science is gradually cracking the mysteries around many of the issues which cause dementia, wrinkles, poor cardio vascular health etc. and the promise is that not only will people live longer, but that they will enjoy better health for a longer period of time too. Other developments are advancing rapidly around artificial organs and body parts, using diverse techniques to grow or even 3D print replacements. So problems arising from wear and tear, disease or accidents will gradually be  addressed by grown parts rather than donor parts or metal joint replacements, and a wider range of problems will be addressed.

Although we are still at the very early stages of cracking the direct computer to brain interface, significant progress is being made in a number of point technologies for applications such as controllable artificial limbs with sensory feedback, bionic vision and bionic hearing. Further to this, there already is a small counter culture movement of people who have installed other sensory devices built into their bodies to provide feedback on things which extend the normal range of human senses, moving towards a cyber person model. 

Given other social trends around personal identity, sexuality and gender fluidity, it may well be that in 20 years time we will not only be living longer and healthier, but be multi-gender and cyber enhanced to extend our range of limbs, experience and senses. Though it is unlikely that we will get to the point of actually having 2 heads or additional gills for swimming underwater (as in certain science fiction stories).

On route to this, other automation developments offer hugely improved quality of life for disabled people who are still beyond treatment. The automated home is just about here. Many of the building blocks which let a relative look after an aged grand parent or invalided child at a distance are there awaiting universal adoption as an integrated home care package. Although in some cases this may require architects to rethink design and layout of homes to facilitate this. Autonomous vehicle technology promises to keep people mobile, when they can no longer drive and may even remove the need to learn or pass a test, offering greater freedom of movement to everyone. 

TRANSPORT

Whilst Elon Musk and some other ventures are worrying about faster mass transit systems and sending the first people to Mars, there are a significant number of people working on flying vehicles using multiple fans. Lighter materials, lighter and stronger electric motors, lighter batteries, improved automatic control and guidance are all making this practicable. The regulatory framework may not be there, but we are moving to denser high rise cities where 3 dimensional transport is needed to make them work. So in 20 years time, we should start to see mass adoption of Jetson style transport as envisaged in 1950s cartoons.

Matter transporters, however are unlikely to get there any time soon. Research is still based around moving photons and other very small particles around labs. Scaling out is going to take a long time.

THE WORLD OF WORK

Manufacturing and Industry have changed massively since the 1960s. Flexible automation, CADCAM, Lean Manufacturing, new processes and materials, biotechnology and Globalisation are only some of the things which have changed the way in which things are made. The 3D printer in its many forms is beginning to look like the new game changer. Whether it is for complex shaped parts, printing chemicals or assembling nanites, the basis for totally changing the production of goods is already there. The next steps will address the range of materials involved, sophistication of control over their properties and the overall economics. For many items, it may well be that we buy a licensed copy of a design and print what we want or need, be it clothing, kitchen utensils or prescription drugs. Manufacturing in China just to ship something to Europe (say) will decrease.

Offices, however, are interesting. It is repeatedly shown that people need to be together regularly in the same room to build relationships and trust in order to work effectively together. But other trends also mean that people are increasingly looking for portfolio careers where they work in several more flexible jobs at once. Additionally, digital business models tend to encourage the organisation of teams into smaller more autonomous units. So it is quite possible that offices and hotels will merge to provide flexible pay by use spaces with overnight accommodation, meeting rooms and VC facilities to enable more fluid and dynamic working. 

Towards the end of 20 years from now, brain computer interfaces may become robust and capable enough to enable working without screens or key boards. So much so, that people will be able to do office work whilst pounding away on a running machine or a rowing machine. The office will then gradually disappear.

CONTEXT OF DISRUPTION

China is aiming to be the next world super power. Africa is beginning to stir as an economically active continent (beyond subsistence and extraction or primary goods), South America is showing promise of delivering on its promise, whilst Saudi Arabia and the Middle East look increasingly unstable especially as oil revenues fade and other aspects of economic development fail to grow quickly enough. At the same time climate is changing, raising the likelihood that major cities everywhere will need to move inland or disappear. Global warming will happen irrespective of whether CO2 output drops or not, so viable crops and rain patterns will change in many countries. 

This will drive mass migration of people in many directions and change social attitudes, putting pressure on economic development. China could loose its manufacturing wealth to the changes in manufacturing methods which are coming. Raising lifespans will also change demand patterns. The downside being that some advances could kill others off.

It may well come to the point where countries start to build mass floating extensions to their landmasses to accommodate population growth and counter the threats of rising sea levels.

Post Digital Dawn: The New Human Computer Interface

As an expression, La Interfaccia Uomo Macchina sounds a lot more sexy than HCI (or human computer interface), but then english speakers have often been suckers for Romantic Languages. Recently, however, the whole topic has become much more interesting as Elon Musk has started to hint about his interest in Neural Laces or direct brain to AI links.

He has now come into the open and announced his investment and interest in Neuralink, a startup specialising in brain to compute interfaces (see: http://bit.ly/2naV4sB ). This builds on progress in a number of areas around understanding the brain and development of a significant number of devices which interface with the central nervous system to enable things such as control of artificial limbs and to help manage the impacts of neurological conditions such as Parkinson's Disease. 

Basically we are seeing the start of the next wave of Information Science and the next big thing after Digital. Although Digital is powerful and will continue to change the way the world operates for quite some time to come, it is limited by the siloed nature of current technologies. True they operate together, with a little integration effort, but they are constrained by the limits of the internet and existing graphical interfaces.

Others have also come into the open with their plans for human computer interfaces, e.g. Brian Johnson of Braintree discussed this at the Recode code conference and Steve Hoffman at TED.

Musk has now lit the fuse for next revolution. Although to be honest this will take a long time to mature in terms of capability, safety and comfort in using the technologies involved. There are a lot of issues to resolve before Neural Laces become something that people are comfortable to adopt.

Firstly, the operating systems of current technologies are just not robust enough. Anything that is intended to operate closely with the human brain should be as least as reliable as the human brain. Secondly, no only must it be safe to attach and integrate Neural Laces with the human brain, there needs to be a robust path for maintenance, upgrade and removal. As it is highly probable that some people's bodies or brains would reject such technology, no one would want to be locked into an inevitable obsolescence as the technology improves, and there are bound to be faults which need rectifying. So "graceful failure" must also be built in. Thirdly, there needs to be a high level of security and privacy built into the Neural Laces, otherwise the risk of being hacked, swamped with unwanted information or interrogated by thought police is too high. Fourthly, the Neural Lace needs to be able to take power from biological processes within the body and to operate at a temperature which will not damage the human brain. Finally, the Internet will need to be completely re-engineered to work safely and effectively with people. There already is a known challenge for the IoT, but this represents a complete step up for networking capability. This all assumes that the basic interface technology can be developed in the first place.

However, the biggest challenges are likely to lie in the human and societal arena. Putting aside the fact that some people would always oppose such technology as being against their religious beliefs, there is a need to address questions around ethics of use, legal issues around IPR, liability and things such as acceptability of evidence sourced via a Neural Lace. There may even be issues of disability if someone is not capable of adopting such technology. Finally, there is a need to develop psychological understanding of how to deal with the vast amounts of data (as opposed to information) associated with using a Neural Lace. If appropriate filtering of data and information feeds is not designed into a Neural Lace, the danger is that it will cripple its host or drive the person insane.

So it may be that the real beneficiaries of developing this technology will be the psychologists and lawyers needed to make it fit for people and society.